


Proof of Concept

by Therrae (Dasha_mte)



Series: Xenoethnography [4]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One, Transformers: Prime, Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 18:04:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19481164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dasha_mte/pseuds/Therrae
Summary: “The good news here,” Dr. Nomura said, “Is that we don’t have to rush the solution to any problems that arise. An immobile mech, the energon system depressurized and the lower lines drained—the patient is not going to bleed out or go into shock. He is not using weapons. He is not going to sustain additional damage from the open systems. And there will be enough residual energon available to the protoform to keep that healthy under these conditions for…judging by the size, I would say two or three days. Plenty of time to deal with any unexpected emergencies.”





	Proof of Concept

On the first Friday in August, Kim had nothing on the schedule but a math lesson at lunch with Fixit, so she joined the trainees at the yellow line that marked the infirmary boarder. At exactly 8:00 Ratchet waved them over with a grunt and sent them up to the shelf. The large view screen was already unfolded and showing a series of photos.

Ratched waited until they were all in position and then sighed half-heartedly. “I don’t suppose any of you can tell me what this is?”

“It’s a valve,” June said quickly. Ratchet waited a moment to see if anyone would disagree, but his students were already nodding. They had learned not to dally.

“I suppose it would be too much to ask you to hazard a system for the valve, Nurse Darby?”

“Energon circulation. You can tell by the seal.”

Ratchet relented slightly. “Thank you. Now. Evaluate its performance.” A chart covered in English abbreviations and numbers popped onto the screen. 

This took longer. Kim could not make heads or tails of either the image or the performance analysis, so she watched the trainees. Epps was flipping through a notebook. Carly seemed to be counting on her fingers. Dr. Nomura was motionless for a long moment and then said, “It is leaking under stress. It must be replaced.”

“Replaced? Not repaired?” Ratchet said archly.

“How long has it been in position?” Carly asked.

Ratchet sighed. “One thousand, two hundred and six years—not counting time spent in stasis.”

Carly cursed softly. Epps rolled his eyes. Dr. Nomura shook his head. “Even with an excellent nanite colony, that is forty percent over the proscribed repair schedule for moving parts in an energon system.”

“So you recommend replacement?” Ratchet prompted.

“Do we have the part in stock? Or would we have to construct one?”

“The part is in stock.”

“Then I would replace it immediately.”

The others nodded.

Ratchet looked them over. He grunted, but it was more acceptance than disapproval. “You will each write out a protocol proposal for the procedure. You have ten minutes. Do not consult one another. Begin.”

They all took out tablets and began scrambling. Kim stayed still. From where she sat, she could see Carly flipping through the medical database Ratchet had translated and left on the server. That was telling: Carly was comfortable enough with Ratchet’s filing system that she thought she could find the formal protocol in less than ten minutes.

Dr. Nomura was confident in a different way: he was writing out a protocol from scratch, typing swiftly and smoothly with no pauses to think.

More slowly, June and Bobby were building bulleted lists, and Pierre was making a diagram. Kim, feeling slightly left out, busied herself describing the moment in fieldnotes.

At exactly ten minutes, Ratchet instructed them to submit. Several seconds later he snorted disgustedly. “It will be a miracle if the patient survives! Take a look at my feedback and then come together to construct a protocol. Divide the task into roles for five humans; you’ll be doing this together.”

Apparently they had gotten similar assignments before. There was no arguing or fussing with dominance. Dr Nomura took notes in Japanese, Bobby in English. June—who actually had the fewest corrections on her proposal—broke down the procedure and offered it in tiny phases for the everyone to discuss.

They were ready to present to Ratchet only twenty minutes later.

Phase one: use a medical override to take the patient’s primary systems off line and release the armor catches.

Phase two: retract the hip panels and shift aside the actuator line and cables—here they had a list of occluding parts (the snapshots weren’t quite complete on that score, so they had had to request the schematic for the particular patient).

Phase three: suction out any spilled energon and inspect the valve exterior.

Phase four: drop energon circulatory pressure to room ambient, drain the lower system, and then shut off circulation completely.

Phase five: remove the damaged valve and clear out any additional spilled energon.

Phase six: inspect the valve interior and repair as necessary.

Phase seven: set the new valve.

Phase eight: restart the central pump and then the peripherals, bringing up the pressure slowly.

Phase nine: bring the patient’s primary functions back on line.

After the presentation, Ratchet quizzed them: What would they need to be monitoring to make sure complications didn’t arise? What if there were escalating signs of spark distress? What would they do if the line’s valve connector was deformed by age, auto-repair errors, or corrosion? What kinds of problems might arise in re-pressurizing the energon circulation?

“The good news here,” Dr. Nomura said, “Is that we don’t have to rush the solution to any problems that arise. An immobile mech, the energon system depressurized and the lower lines drained—the patient is not going to bleed out or go into shock. He is not using weapons. He is not going to sustain additional damage from the open systems. And there will be enough residual energon available to the protoform to keep that healthy under these conditions for…judging by the size, I would say two or three days. Plenty of time to deal with any unexpected emergencies.”

Ratchet looked at him sharply. “And in an absolute worst case synerio?”

He raised his chin fractionally. “Medically induced stasis lock.”

“You seem very confident.”

“Unlike humans, mecha are designed to be repaired. The procedure is simple.”

“Hmmm. You will reverse phases three and four.” Nods and quick notations. “You will omit phases one and nine.”

June jumped out of her folding chair, tossing her tablet onto the seat behind her and—for the first time—facing Ratchet rather than her team members. “Absolutely not,” she said. “Maybe a mech can survive for a couple of days on that little bit of energon,” she gave Dr. Nomura an angry look, “but it will be terrifying and painful, and I am not putting a conscious patient through that.”

“It will not be painful,” Ratchet corrected blandly.

“No,” Carly said. “It will be like starving.”

Ratchet managed to look down his nose at them—a pretty trick since he didn’t really have a nose. “Even if it was profitable to anthropomorphize mech experience, _starvation_ would not be a useful metaphor for λλλλ.”

“They’re right,” Epps said. “You’ve never shown us a procedure on an energon system where the patient was awake. If this is a test, we’re not failing it.”

Ratchet threw his hands in the air disgustedly. “Yes, yes, you are all very careful about procedures. Thank you, but no. You are not rendering the patient unconscious because the patient is _me_ , and I am not about to turn you lot loose on a part replacement without me awake to supervise you. The subject is closed.”

Several seconds of stunned silence followed. June sat down. Carly looked faintly ill. Epps gaped at his notes as though he was afraid they would change.

Without waiting for them to rally, Ratchet continued: “Ms. Spencer has the spark monitor; she’s the one most likely to learn something from observing spark distress in real time. Mr. Dosso will be doing his best on medical interface; try not to let my systems crash, if you can manage it, Pierre. Lt. Darby, it is your turn to handle the replacement, which leaves Dr. Nomura on suction and Sergeant Epps as our scrub nurse. We will spend the rest of the morning on simulations, with the procedure after lunch.”

“But—Ratchet—“ Pierre began.

“Tut-ut-ut. I did not ask for any information that would begin with ‘But Ratchet.’ Let’s take it from the beginning. What happens first?”

Pierre sagged. “It’s me,” he said softly. “The first thing we must do is establish medical interface, that’s me….”

For the next three hours they went through the procedure over and over, in detail, with diagrams, and with various hypothetical medical complications thrown in along the way. Now that they knew the patient would be awake, the trainees kept adding steps to the plan. Ratchet drilled them ruthlessly on surprise problems and unlikely mistakes. 

“Look,” June said, “do we _have_ to shut down the whole energon system? We’re only replacing one valve. Can’t we, I guess, shunt around the problem valve?”

Ratchet made an irritated noise and Carly winced sympathetically while pulling up a diagram. “It’s the second valve in the main line. It’s one we’d use if we were shutting down a peripheral section.” She smiled encouragingly, “Good thinking like an engineer, though. You’ll be a mechanic yet.”

“If we could move along?” Ratchet prompted.

Kim wondered if the trainees had the same tight knot that she had in her stomach.

***

After lunch the trainees reported back to the infirmary and prepared for surgery. Bobby and Carly laid out the equipment: a case of human-sized but alien-headed wrenches, a replacement valve which was smaller around than Kim’s pinky, a spare replacement valve in case something went wrong with the first one, rolls of three and four gauge medical sealing tape, binder clips and zip ties, a handheld wet vac, a magnifying glass, and long gloves and face shields because they would be working with refined energon.

No one was talking.

Ratchet unfolded an active pallet and settled himself face-up. The surface was slightly spongy but only minimally adjustable, so it was less comfortable for a big mech than a medical berth. But it was much easier to walk on for humans, and Ratchet said he didn’t want to be thinking about the medical team falling off during the procedure.

“Ratchet,” Kim said softly, “Do you need someone to talk to?”

His head shifted in slight surprise before he focused on her narrowly. “Ah. Thank you, but no. I will be occupied supervising _them_. You may observe from the shelf.”

“Okay.”

The trainees were still quiet as they organized the equipment on Ratchet’s upper thigh (no actual table in the infirmary was a size that would be useful to humans).

Finely, Pierre knelt on the pallet next to Ratchet’s wrist. He had a tablet and a medical cable. He cleared his throat. “We’re ready, Boss. I need your port.”

The tiny panel on Ratchet’s wrist opened with a decisive snap. Very gently, Pierre jacked the cable in and then shifted to sit cross-legged with his lower back resting against Ratchet’s arm. From her position on the shelf, Kim could see him using the touch-screen to set up his display, but she was too far away to read the labels he was selecting.

At last Pierre said, “I’m ready for the override key.” This was not something Kim had seen before, but, of course, Ratchet normally handled medical overrides himself—through his own hardline interface—if one was needed.

Ratchet answered with a string of numbers in English for Pierre to enter, adding, “Shut down my gross motor function and quaternary reflexes.”

“Okay. Does this feel all right?”

“It is no more unpleasant than it is supposed to be. Please proceed.”

With is left hand, Pierre reached out and patted the arm he was braced against. He was ungloved because he was working the tablet and his fingers—long, thin, dark—stood out against the stark white of Ratchet’s armor. His softness, somehow, stood out, too. Touching for kindness was such a human thing to do. Kim hoped Ratchet understood.

“Fuel mix?”

“I’m setting it to one,” Pierre said. “Give it a couple of minutes.”

Ratchet said, “I have reconsidered. This step is not strictly necessary.”

June straightened. “Respectfully disagree, sir.”

“It’s a waste of energon.”

“I’m not going to subject a patient to unnecessary pain. And it’s a trivial amount of energon.”

From her position Kim could see Ratchet’s face plating tighten into almost a smile. “I am familiar with your ‘patient’s bill of rights,’ _nurse_. Your rules require my consent to procedures.”

“That’s true. But I’m also bound by ‘do no harm.’” June did not sound irritated or particularly surprised by Ratchet’s rebellion. “This isn’t emergency surgery. We can tape up the leak and wait for WheelJack to come back and do it properly. With you unconscious.”

“Unacceptable.”

“Then we will proceed with the safest and most comfortable procedure.” This sounded more mom-voice than medical personnel or military. Kim almost smiled.

“I concede.” Ratchet gave in so quickly that Kim wondered if the issue had been a test.

“One-hundred percent energon,” Pierre said. “June?”

“Begin the wash cycle,” she said.

‘Wash cycle’ was substituting for an untranslatable Cybertronix phrase that meant delivering doses of energon to protomatter. In this case, it was a ‘complete wash cycle,’ and all of Ratchet’s undifferentiated protomatter and protoform parts would be briefly sluiced with pure energon, unmixed with other fuels. This would extend the amount of time his energon system could be off line for at least two more days (the team was praying only an hour would be necessary, but if something went wrong it was a cushion of time) and ease the worst of the λλλλ sensation having the system shut down would bring.

June paused for a moment, then rolled her shoulders and said, “How are we doing, Pierre?”

“The wash cycle will need another four and a half minutes. Electropulse is four point two kilohertz, variance is less than one percent.”

Kim was impressed: variance in electropulse was considered healthy and normal at one and a half percent.

“Carly?” June prompted.

Carly was on the monitor console, standing beside a view screen nearly three feet across that showed intertwining circles of colored light. It reminded Kim a little of spirograph art. “Spark containment is at five hundred percent. Spark wave-form is ‘S’ shaped with no distortions.”

“…. Is that good?” June asked. Spark diagramming was Carly’s thing, and while she had tried to explain, the other trainees only ever saw chaos in her charts and graphs.

“It’s really good. Like…he’s meditating-good. He’s got to be doing this on purpose.”

“Thank you,” Ratchet said dourly. “I’m doing my best. But no. Mild euphoria is common in the first few minutes after switching to pure energon. Perhaps we could get on with the procedure?” 

“Right. Okay. Can you retract the left tasset?” June asked.

The plating on the bottom of Ratchet’s abdomen folded aside. Bobby turned on the headlamp of his face mask and leaned over the opening. He poked something with is finger. “Can you release the catch on this insulation? Yeah, that’s good.” He lifted out a thin, flexible wafer of insulation and began gently gathering the lines, cables, and tubes beneath into little bundles. Confidently, smoothly, he clipped each bundle aside. This was one of the first hands-on techniques the trainees had learned. “I’m seeing some….goo. Is that congealed energon?” He angled to the side and made room for June and Dr. Nomura. “How long has this been leaking?”

“This time, six point two vorns. My internal repair has gone several rounds with the seal, but the inner surface of the valve is now starting to degrade, and that’s out of reach.” Ratchet sounded almost embarrassed about not being able to maintain the part any longer.

“Well,” June drawled, “it’s only a thousand years old….”

Dr. Nomura tisked quietly and prodded surrounding area with a tiny pointed tool. “Is this mixed with lubricant? Hm. Very sticky. I’d like to try some solvent before trying to scrape it off. Ratchet, will butanone dissolve this?”

“Yes, thank you, I don’t want anything _scraped_ off.”

Bobby was already retrieving a quart glass bottle labeled ‘human safe’ and a child’s toothbrush from the clean-up kit.

Kim found her hands were sweating. Her page was smudging. Gah. She rubbed her palms over her forearms.

Below on the pallet, the trainees didn’t hurry. Drip, scrub with the brush. Drip, scrub with the brush. Every third cycle, Dr. Nomura ducked in his suction wand and cleared out whatever sludge was coming off Ratchet’s internals. Kim rolled her shoulders and tried to emulate their patience.

Finally, June leaned over the opening with a penlight and the magnifying glass. “I don’t see a leak. Doc, do you see a leak?”

“I do not,” Dr. Nomura said.

From her position on the console, Carly called, “We have the sonogram and the readout. We _know_ it’s worn out.”

June took a deep breath. “Ratchet, how certain are you that the leak is in the valve housing rather than the connector or the line?”

“I have not withheld information,” he answered. “I know no more than you do.”

Dr. Nomura nodded. “You are the lead today, Lieutenant Darby,” he said with grave politeness. 

“Pierre, bring up the pressure a little—yeah, keep going, go slow—oh, there we go, there’s a drop. Yeah. It’s the valve. Okay. Good. Visual confirmation. Ratchet, how are you doing?”

“Do not dally, June.”

“Okay, Pierre, over to you. Let the pressure out.”

Pierre didn’t rush it. He used the tablet to slack Ratchet’s other valves and turn off the energon pumps. “Shutting down fuel feed to weapons systems….shutting down fuel feed to torque engines…shutting down fuel feed to locomotion systems… switching cognition to back-up power… dropping pressure….” At last he said, “System pressure matches air pressure. Opening secondary reservoir….That will take a minute or so to take up the extra…”

“How’s his electropulse?”

“It’s gone up about eighty hertz, but the variance is still under one percent.”

June reached in and pinched the energon line between her thumb and forefinger. “This is empty,” she said.

Pierre shook his head. “I’m still showing a lot of energon in the system.” Ratchet made a soft, unhappy noise.

“Hm. Carly,” June said, “Go to the pallet controls and lower the head four degrees. If we can drain him out a little more, we’ll have less of a leak when we take out the valve.”

“Get on with it,” Ratchet said in a flat, emotionless voice. He had dropped the language pack he normally used so fluidly.

“Right. Getting on with it. Doc, you ready?”

Dr. Nomura lifted the suction wand.

With two of the human-sized tools, June griped the valve and triggered its releases. One end popped out. The other seemed to stick. June put down the tools and began to wiggle the valve with her gloved fingers. Tiny, slow movements. She tugged gently, rocking her hand back and forth, and it came free. A little sliver streak of energon trickled from the damaged part and the line. Dr. Nomura swooped in with suction to clear it away.

“You have to. Examine.” Ratchet paused, reset his vocalizer. “Tell me. How it. Looks.”

June handed the old valve to Bobby and then leaned down with a flashlight and magnifying glass to inspect the lines and line connecters. If the connectors were distorted or noticeably worn, they would have to be replaced, too. If there was corrosion, it would have to be ground away.

“Ratchet,” Pierre said softly, “Your variance is three—four—percent. Let me clear your error messages.”

“ब全ๆ цی” Ratchet answered.

Still speaking gently, Pierre said, “Kim? Can you--?”

“’Yes, please,’” She answered. “He says, ‘yes, please.’”

His fingers danced across the tablet. “Okay. And the backup system. Okay. That looks a little better. You’re doing great.”

At Ratchet’s hip, June and Bobby were swabbing out the damaged valve and the connectors, looking for signs of damage.

“I’m reading some minor disturbances in the spark corona,” Carly said. “I can’t tell if it’s panic or pain.”

Pierre was already changing settings on the tablet, “Boss, I’m displaying all the protoform monitors where I can see them. They’re healthy. They’re fine. You have plenty of energon, days of energon.”

“Affirmative. I confirm—” His vocalizer reset twice. “Energon.”

“Ratchet…Let me cut the feed from your internal monitoring.”

There was a short pause. When Ratchet answered his English was only a little better. “Judging that I’m reacting badly to stress now. Try me when I can’t tell what you’re doing.”

“You are watching us on four cameras. You will know exactly what we are doing.” Pierre’s voice was soft and encouraging. Kim wondered if Ratchet was running enough of the language pack to realize that.

Ratchet didn’t answer.

Kim took out her phone and glyphed, _courage_ ; _strength_ ; _enduring_ _patience_ ; _sympathy_.

Pierre fiddled with his tablet and tried again. “How about I just drop the data coming in from your protoform. Eighty percent of it is coming in through just three sensory nodes—” 

The wail was very brief—a rising and falling arpeggio with a harmony that went straight through Kim’s teeth and made her jaw tingle before cutting sharply off.

“I’m doing it.” Pierre’s fingers were fast across the screen.

In English, Ratchet stuttered, “Why. Did. I. Do. This!”

Pierre stood up and leaned his thin body against Ratchet’s broad carapace. “You did this because there is more combat coming, and you don’t have enough servos to care for all the injured. People will die if you don’t have help, but the help you’ve got is stupid and weak and clumsy and ignorant and disgusting. How can you trust us with your patients? You have to test us, but you won’t turn us loose on anyone else…so that just leaves you, Boss. That’s why you’re doing this. It’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“A simple replacement. My protomatter is not dying.”

“I’m looking at it right now. Your protomatter is fine. Ratchet. My friend. Your electropulse variance is now at almost five percent. Please calm down. Just a little. Or we need to shut down cognitive functions.”

“No. Will not abandon. My students.” The wail started to build again, again was choked off.

“Okay. Easy. We’ll do it your way. You’re still in charge. But….Calm down. We’re almost done. Keep it together.” It was, Kim realized, more talking than she had ever heard Pierre do at once.

“Easy. Yes. Calm. Trust Pierre. Pierre who is monitoring me. Pierre who has scars on his arms. From my energon. Burned his dermis. With my energon. Saving my life.” He was on the dictionary now, Kim realized, glossing words and phrases individually from Cytertronix, rather than integrating the English interface.

From Ratchet’s hip, June called, “Ratchet, you’re clean, no lesions. The distal connector isn’t deformed, it was just had that gunk caked in the latch. We’re almost done. Hang in there.”

“Шθ 幾自خا어 ی 久自” _Primus have mercy_.

“Kim?” Pierre prompted, his voice calm, his eyes on his tablet.

“Not content. Um. An interjection.”

“Come on, just a little longer,” Pierre coaxed. “They’re almost done.”

Kim winced. But Ratchet was not a combat mech: he would not interpret that phrase as a threat of quick death.

“We’re done,” June said. “The new valve is in place.”

Ratchet’s answer was a low-tooth buzzing whine that peaked and faded in a couple of seconds.

June arched backward and took a deep breath. “Okay, Pierre. Turn the system back on.”

Bringing the energon system on-line was slower than taking it down had been. June had Pierre increasing the pressure at five percent increments. Ratchet intermittently growled at them to hurry. At seventy-five percent full command of human idiom came back and he began criticizing their technique. At ninety-percent he went silent.

At one-hundred and five percent, Pierre and Carly went through a checklist, calling out numbers to one another that made no sense to Kim but clearly pleased them.

At last, when everyone was satisfied that Ratchet’s main power system was well and truly functioning normally, Bobby began freeing the bundles of wires and cables and tubes from their clips.

“Returning cognitive systems to primary power. And this terminates the medical override.” Pierre set his tablet in his lap and gently sild the medical cable from Ratchet’s port. Bobby was putting away the tools and Dr. Nomura was handing his shopvac off to Arcee—who seemed to appear from nowhere--for decontamination. June walked shakily to the edge of the active pallet and sat down with her feet over the edge. Carefully, she stripped off her gloves.

Ratchet sat up; a smooth, graceful movement that didn’t jostle any of the humans clustered around him. “Thank you,” he said. His optical lenses were unfocused; pointed in all different directions the light reflecting off them had gone rainbow. He brought a servo—almost protectively—to the hip. “That was…more or less adequate.”

“Ya-ay,” Bobby muttered shakily. Dr. Nomura paused in his tidying up to give a tiny bow. June scrubbed her palms over her face.

Around the infirmary, several of the large monitors flickered on. “Nurse Darby, you didn’t inspect the replacement valve before installing it.”

June’s head snapped up. “ _You_ inspected it. I saw you inspect it!”

“You were in charge,” he said softly. “What if I missed something?”

“That is not plausible,” Dr. Nomura protested.

Ratchet twisted slightly to look at him. “The Stoddard solvent would have been more efficient in removing the caked effluent than butanone.”

Dr. Nomure looked down. “I will remember that. Thank you.”

“Dr. Montgomery, your glyph message was of kindly intent but incoherent.”

“Sorry, Ratchet,” she said.

“I’ll send you phrasing that isn’t internally contradictory. And do not apologize for kindness. Carly, you were looking at disturbances in the corona. What was your thought on the wave instability in the lower frequencies?”

“I…didn’t notice them.”

“Hm.” A recording of Ratchet’s spark appeared on the largest screen. “You only perceive this as a visual light approximation. Perhaps—” The image split into three parts, three separate, spinning, rippling spyrograph spheres. One flattened into a two dimensional diagram. The other two shifted colors, one leaning red, another blue. Different rings and curves suddenly stood out from the others on each image.

Carly looked at the image for a long minute. “That little jagged streak….” She said. “It was unstable. And it was propagating.”

“Spark distress, the kind resulting from physical trauma. Not severe, compensation wasn’t warranted. But definite. You should have been watching it.”

Carly swallowed hard, nodded.

“Hm. Minor mistakes aside, the procedure was completely successful. Congratulations. The patient lived.” His face plates shifted. Kim blinked. Was he trying to smile? “I am scheduled for six hours’ shut down for system maintenance. When you have finished here, you may take the rest of the afternoon off.” He hesitated. “Thank you.”

No one said anything while they wiped down and put away the tools.

~Fin

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I'm sort of back. Er. Hi.  
> This just a one shot. It really doesn't fit with the other stuff I'm writing. (Resisting was hard, after seeing the Bee movie. Leaks happened. Here's one.)  
> Thanks as always to Martha. I appreciate your patience with the pain-in-the-rear technical complexities. And also me jumping wildly around in time and giving you things out of order.


End file.
